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He came just after Bawal, for whom Yu brought the sixth bowl. By the time he brought the seventh, Jerakill was also with the fireplace group, while the borman had seated himself alone at one of the empty tables near the kitchen entrance. It was the tallest and the only one made of stone, a slab-like construction with thick legs like columns and three massive chairs around it. Yu had to pass him each time as he went out and in, and then out and in again to serve the two brannok. Four times in total. Four turns of that massive head following his every move.

Bormen had tiny, beady eyes set deeply into their faces, which meant that they always moved their whole head to look around. And they did look. It was disturbing, especially when there were more of them. When there was a pack of them out in the open and settlement people passed by, you could see them literally turn, from person to person as their attention shifted, the same thick motion replicated across every neck. It was creepy to watch, and even worse when it was your turn.

Yu knew what bormen were. Everyone in the settlements knew. You needed to watch them, always, because they could lash out any second, without pattern of warning and without provocation. They could turn on you from any distance, for anything or nothing at all. But it was one thing to know that, and another to feel it. It was one thing to pass danger in the street, keeping your head down, and measuring your five plus one steps plus as many more as possible. And then it was an entirely different kind of terror to see the danger staring back at you; when a bunch of three meter brutes all together, suddenly, angled their massive heads and focussed solemnly on you.

And with Yu and Tria, they always did. Wherever Tria went, she drew their eyes and heads, and by extension, they also fixed at Yu. And when they did, they did not let go. Of course, normal people recognised Tria and Yu as well — the tairan, the nepter, and the other fina. But their attention had social texture, the ordinary friction of common awareness. They looked out of admiration or at least acknowledgement for Tria as a political figure, and because Yu was weird and a cripple. Some recognised them with obvious gestures, others with words, others with but a curious glance. The bormen, however, were different. Their attention was a physical thing. They always gave Tria their collective and uninterrupted hostility until she was out of sight, and longer still. It was like being followed by a sound too low to hear but too heavy to ignore, a pressure that nested under the ribs and then bred fear. To Yu, their bodies spoke of nothing but aggression sharpened by patience, of stillness before slaughter. He had told her so, repeatedly, because the threat was just so obvious and so absolute. But Tria had never taken him seriously. It is no secret they hate me. It does not take wizard senses to see that. She had always shrugged it off with words like that. Worse, she had dismissed Yu, harshly, as if his fear for her life were an insult. And she had meant it. Her body had boasted pride, composure and cold condescension. Sometimes, a flicker of concern. But never fear. Yu had hated Tria for that composure, for how unshaken she seemed before things that terrified him. He had hated her in many regards, but at the same time, as contradictory as it was, he could not help but admire her for this defiance — for being the one person that stared back and dared the beasts to blink first.

And now, Yu was about to serve one of those beasts, one of the same kind that outright wanted to kill his shirka. He would have to, eventually. And he understood the order of things. He knew from first-wing experience that the new travellers must be drop-dead starving and, respectively, should be cared for first. But there was no world in which Yu would serve a borman before anyone else. So, after serving Bawal and Jerakill, he turned the eighth bowl into the second helping for Nion.

During all this time, he borman said and did nothing. He just sat, either staring at Yu or straight towards the kitchen entry. Eventually, Yu realised that he was not watching the door but the space behind, where his human had disappeared. Meanwhile, there was no sight nor sound of the krynn. He was still with the selder and the shaman, presumably. Yu believed that the krynn wanted to keep watch over his companion. He thought that he was wary of the shaman and her tools, and that he was probably set on waiting until she was done. Those thoughts came from the screaming part, with the terror reasonably filtered through the mask until it was processed into sensible whispers. The wanting part whispered something else entirely, something without words —

Yu stopped it, pushed it back and then pressed it down. And then he spoke over it to tell himself that the krynn would come out of the sick bay in his own time.

But he did not. Not while Yu finished serving Harrow's group, not when he did his first, second, or third sweep of the kitchen spills and neither during that follow-up attempt to scrub the floor. Not even when he finally brought a bowl for the borman.

-- So then Yu brought a second bowl.

-- Which he also set down on the bormans's table.

-- "This is for the krynn," he explained, more to the room in general than to the borman, because by the time the last word left his mouth, he had already taken his five steps back.

As if the krynn would hear that. As if he would suddenly come out after all this time, after all of Yu's countless passings back and forth through the walkway. Why did he not come? Did he really not hear what was going on? Did he not smell the stew? Did he not want to eat? Or could he not come, because … because the shaman held him?

Whatever it was, the borman made no attempt to go fetch him — Maybe because he did not care for the selder, or the krynn, for that matter, or maybe because he simply knew better than to cross the kitchen threshold, after Bubs had so obviously banned him from the sick bay. Still, he could have asked Yu to do it instead. But no, all the borman said, in that thick, gravelled voice, was: "Thank you," and then, after a pause, "I have a spoon. Please."

So then Yu.

Had to do.

Another back and forth.

For The One. Single. Borman.

IN. THE. WORLD.

Who pretended he did not eat straight-up snout to bowl.

Yu had, of course, also forgotten the spoon for the krynn — though with a justifiable reason; because he had not needed to bring any with the earlier bowls either. So now he fetched two: a random one for the krynn, and for the borman the largest spoon he could find in his half-hearted search. His full heart would never be in it. Not in serving a borman.

He told himself that he only did it to avoid suspicion. The borman did not know that Yu was from the settlements. He could have come from anywhere. After all, only a few fina lived in the Northlands, while the great flocks migrated back and forth between the southern Midlands and the South. Atop that, the borman could not know whether Yu had been at the guild for a day or a decade, or for his whole miserable life — unless, of course, he had been here before, or someone had told him. If not, Yu's attitude should not make him wary. For Yu to better investigate and hinder the borman's intentions with the human, the brute must not suspect him. There must be no hint that Yu knew how the Barnstream habitat operated, or what the forged papers implied.

This borman clearly did not. He could not be from the settlements. No borman from there would have been dumb enough to use the Barnstream Habitat itself to counterfeit human papers. Selling humans to bormen had been outlawed for six years. To forge Tria's name, of all names, for a crime she had personally outlawed, was beyond stupidity, regardless of how close the forged signature came to Tria's original.

So Yu served him, but that did not mean he offered him any courtesy beyond the bare minimum. He could not have been polite about it, even if he had wanted to. It was not like Yu could have passed him the spoon from wing to claw, physically speaking. No, he tossed both spoons into a mug and dropped the thing on the table just so. Then he retreated, quick enough to be gone before the clatter ceased and borman could so much as reach. Rushing to shake off the noise and the glances of the common room, Yu hurried through the first kitchen door. But once in the narrow corridor, his pace faltered.

The door to the sick bay stood just a feather's width ajar.

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Yu approached. Slowly. Carefully. He tried not to scrape the stone with his talons, or let his feathers rustle. When he reached the door, he stilled his breath. Then he leaned forward and peered through the slit.

- He saw nothing but a strip of wall and part of an empty bed.

- He lifted his right wing and pushed against the door, as softly as possible, until the wood yielded with a muted sigh.

- The selder lay on his back. The krynn was with him, hunched on the middle stool that Bubs had used earlier when tending to the two travellers. The shaman sat on the other side of the bed. On the ledge beside her stood two flasks, one dark and one clouded green, both open. She dipped a cloth into the green one and placed it onto the selder's forehead. The scent was so sharp that it reached Yu even from the doorway; something between herbs and rust. It smelled like rain striking the odd, scorched stones of the Undertellems hall.

The krynn looked up at Yu.

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---So did the shaman's mask.

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Yu stepped through the doorway but then halted, seized by the impossible sensation that he had come too close and yet not close enough. He could not open his beak and he could not hold his gaze. His eyes sank to the shaman's right hand, pale against the cloth that lay between her long fingers and the selder's fur. He could not look away. He needed to see if she would touch him directly. At the same time, he needed to see that she would not. His feathers prickled. His thoughts split. The guard mask tried to hold them together and urged him to speak, to announce himself, to perform the expected. But beneath it, the hollow self stirred and swelled and screamed. It saw the shaman's fingers brush the selder's fur and screamed so much that the stammering self shrank back in terror and then fell silent, down to where the Wanting roared. And when the frightened part surrendered, the Wanting surged upwards, straining towards the surface, yearning towards her.

"Hello Yu," said the shaman. "How good of you to serve."

This was not the <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/>'s voice. There was no trace of the <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/>. It was only the shaman who spoke, not the body. And yet, her voice stopped the inner screaming, because now the Wanting listened. It searched. This was not right. The <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/> had to be there. But Yu did not hear her. He still could not hear properly. His ears were still submerged, filled with constant throbbing and pressure that would not drain. He inclined his head, as if that simple tilt could clear his muted senses and let the sound back in. What came out instead was a single word, an attempt to speak, so that he would hear more from her in return; rough, clipped, and not enough. "Hello."

The krynn shifted on his stool. He nodded once in acknowledgment, then stilled again with that same expectant silence.

"Well, yes. There's dinner," Yu continued. "It's ready, I mean. Your companion is in the common room. I brought some food for him. And for you. You can go and eat."

The krynn rose slowly. His eyes moved, first to the selder, then to the shaman, and finally to Yu. He nodded again, firmer this time, and left. There was no protest and no question. His quiet obedience startled Yu. To speak, and have someone simply obey — it unsettled him. He had suggested that the krynn should leave, yes, but it was weird to see him just … do what he said. Like he had a say in what was going on here.

While the krynn's footsteps passed, the shaman set the cloth aside, folded it with quiet precision along its damp creases, and placed it on the rim of a bowl between the two flasks. She wiped her fingers on another cloth that lay beside it. Then she rested her hands in her lap.

And then they were alone.

The orange orblight enveloped her in both majestic elegance and cold reverence. It glid across the manyfold scales of her body, warm where it touched gold, wan where it fell over the blackened patches on her arms and upper body. On her mask, the light vanished whole. The mask remained immaculate, an unbroken, depthless white. The White faced Yu with serene patience.

"It is good to see you back on your feet, Yu." The words held softly measured gentleness.

Yu wanted to throw himself at her feet.

"Yes," he said. His pulse was in his ears.

Where was she? The voice of the <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/>? Why could he not hear her? If only he could hear her once, just one word, one syllable, one single breath.

The mask tilted. "Do you feel better?"

He wanted to feel her. He was hollowed, broken into layers, fragments scraping against one another, terror and longing in a torn body. He wanted her to touch him. Her touch would make it all better.

"Yes," he said.

"You seem shaken. Have you already eaten?" asked the shaman.

"Yes." Yu said.

He was so hungry.

"Be so kind and serve the krynn, then," she said. "He must be starving."

"Yes," Yu said.

He was. He was starving.

"We will speak again, after the witching hour," she said.

"Yes," Yu said.

The shaman did not say more.

Yu needed to hear more. "I ... I have done it. Already. I mean, serve the krynn. He has a bowl already."

She did not reply.

"In the common room. It is there. For him. Already."

The mask was silent.

"I just came to get him." Yu swallowed, but he could not stop the trembling in his voice. "After I was done. Serving."

The mask was silent.

"I mean, I am done. I have served dinner for everyone."

The mask was silent.

"Like you asked."

The body turned towards him.

"So ... I ... I don't have to ... Because he has his bowl already. I don't have to go back."

The body smiled. "After the Witching Hour, Yu."

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